Fashions effects in lesbian stereotypes
Maeve Organ
3rd Year Ceramics
K00206279
Lesbians are a minority group of women attracted to other women, they are part of the LGBTQ+ community and fit under the umbrella term “queer”. Lesbians are stereotyped everyday based on how they appear and their sexual preferences. The main trait in which lesbians are stereotyped by is their self-image, in particular their clothing. Lesbians have been making fashion statements since the beginning of their existence. They express their sexuality through their appearance which often leads to the community being heavily stereotyped. Lesbian fashion stereotypes date back to the late 19th and early 20th century continuing to the present times. We see different fashion
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Women begin to cross-dress as men. Men were more respected and powerful at this time and women wanted to take on this role. Lesbians became more visible around this time and became a part of society which they had not been seen as previously. Until the late 20th century lesbians were seen as masculine and are often considered this to present day. Gladys Bentley is an example of a lesbian performer who started this path to visibility through fashion statements about her sexuality. She represented herself as a masculine woman, wearing clothes directed at males such as top hats and suits. This use of clothing was a way of expressing her sexuality to other people simply through the language of fashion. A typical Gladys Bentley outfit can be seen below on the left. People did not take kindly to these fashion statements and lesbians were forced to wear at least three items of female assigned clothing. This is the beginning of the stereotype known as “butch” and the often derogatory term “bulldyke” throughout the lesbian community in regard to their clothing choices. This stereotype is still relevant in lesbian fashion today and has survived centuries of change. Modern day lesbians still choose to dress and conform to this “masculine” lesbian …show more content…
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Each chapter contains numerous sources which complement the aforementioned themes, to create a new study on cultural history in general but women specifically. Her approach is reminiscent of Foucault, with a poststructural outlook on social definitions and similar ideas on sexuality and agency. Power cannot be absolute and is difficult to control, however Victorian men and women were able to grasp command of the sexual narrative. She includes the inequalities of class and gender, incorporating socioeconomic rhetic into the
Life for most homosexuals during the first half of the Twentieth century was one of hiding, being ever so careful to not give away their true feelings and predilections. Although the 1920s saw a brief moment of openness in American society, that was quickly destroyed with the progress of the Cold War, and by default, that of McCarthyism. The homosexuals of the 50s “felt the heavy weight of medical prejudice, police harassment and church condemnation … [and] were not able to challenge these authorities.” They were constantly battered, both physically and emotionally, by the society that surrounded them. The very mention or rumor of one’s homosexuality could lead to the loss of their family, their livelihood and, in some cases, their lives. Geanne Harwood, interviewed on an National Public Radio Broadcast commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, said that “being gay before Stonewall was a very difficult proposition … we felt that in order to survive we had to try to look and act as rugged and as manly as possibly to get by in a society that was really very much against us.” The age of communist threats, and of Joseph McCarthy’s insistence that homosexuals were treacherous, gave credence to the feeling of most society members that homosexuality was a perversion, and that one inflicted was one to not be trusted.
The media was all over the change in society and came out saying how the style was more comfortable compared to the cumbersome and restrictive style before (8). An anonymous person states this about the change in the past, “revealing clothing and visible cosmetics worn by young women were the cause, or at least a consequence, of this new conception of female sexuality” (qtd. in Cleve 2). Another anonymous person states, “They feel that beauty is not incompatible with modesty.” (qtd.
In his work about gay life in New York City, George Chauncey seeks to dispel the various myths about the gay lifestyle before the Civil Rights era of the 60’s. He distills the misconceptions into three major myths: “…isolation, invisibility, and internalization” (Chauncey 1994, 2). He believes a certain image has taken in the public mind where gays did not openly exist until the 60’s, and that professional historians have largely ignored this era of sexual history. He posits such ideas are simply counterfactual. Using the city of New York, a metropolitan landscape where many types of people confluence together, he details a thriving gay community. Certainly it is a community by Chauncey’s reckoning; he shows gay men had a large network of bar, clubs, and various other cultural venues where not only gay men intermingled the larger public did as well. This dispels the first two principle myths that gay men were isolated internally from other gay men or invisible to the populace. As to the internalization of gay men, they were not by any degree self-loathing. In fact, Chauncey shows examples of gay pride such a drag queen arrested and detained in police car in a photo with a big smile (Chauncey 1994, 330). Using a series of personal interviews, primary archival material from city repositories, articles, police reports, and private watchdog groups, Chauncey details with a preponderance of evidence the existence of a gay culture in New York City, while at the same time using secondary scholarship to give context to larger events like the Depression and thereby tie changes to the gay community to larger changes in the society.
Many of the costumes are designed to highlight the characters and the way they live. For example, Bernadette wears long flowing clothes, usually white or cream. ‘She’ is an older ‘women’ and dresses to look like one with flowing skirts and tops with her hair done up simply. Felicia is more of a stereotypical gay; ‘she’ has a more feminine figure and wears tight clothes when in drag. Felicia looks more masculine out of costume, wearing, stereotypically, a singlet and baggy pants.
They mention the transition of “the closet,” as being a place in which people could not see you, to becoming a metaphor over the last two decades of the twentieth century used for queers who face a lack of sexual identity. Shneer and Aviv bring together two conflicting ideas of the American view of queerness: the ideas of the past, and the present. They state as queerness became more visible, people finally had the choice of living multiple lives, or integrating one’s lives and spaces (Shneer and Aviv 2006: 245). They highlight another change in the past twenty years as the clash between being queer and studying queerness (Shneer and Aviv 2006: 246-7). They argue that the active and visible contests over power among American queers show that queers now occupy an important place in our culture. They expand on the fact that queerness, real, and performed, is everywhere (Shneer and Aviv 2006: 248). This source shows the transformation in American culture of the acceptance of queerness. It makes an extremely critical resource by providing evidence of the changes in culture throughout the last two decades. Having the information that queerness is becoming more accepted in culture links to a higher percentage of LGBTQ youths becoming comfortable with their sexual identity. However, compared to the other sources, this
homosexual liberation. Some have demonstrated their anger and concerns about prejudice against homosexuals in both riots and artistic forms. Therefore, these people seek to prove to the heterosexual world that homosexual ‘deviancy’ was a myth.
...d women’s fashion to break free from convention. Bras and corsets were seen as symbols of oppression and conformity. They were discarded by many women as many new fads appeared,(). Women also exhibited their newfound freedom by wearing traditional male clothing such as baggy trousers, men's jackets, vests, over-sized shirts, ties and hats.
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“The unprecedented growth of the gay community in recent history has transformed our culture and consciousness, creating radically new possibilities for people to ‘come out’ and live more openly as homosexuals”(Herdt 2). Before the 1969 Stonewall riot in New York, homosexuality was a taboo subject. Research concerning homosexuality emphasized the etiology, treatment, and psychological adjustment of homosexuals. Times have changed since 1969. Homosexuals have gained great attention in arts, entertainment, media, and politics. Yesterday’s research on homosexuality has expanded to include trying to understand the different experiences and situations of homosexuals (Ben-Ari 89-90).
Until their deciphering in the 1980’s, the diaries of eighteenth century landowner Anne Lister were an unknown tome of lesbian history. Written largely in a cipher of Lister’s conception, The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister detail not only her day to day routine and superficial social interactions, but also the complexities of her romantic and sexual relationships with women, precise tailoring of her appearance, harassment she faced due to her gender non-conformity, and biting commentary on those in her social circles. Contained in plain hand, legible to anyone who may have come across Lister’s diaries with prying eyes, is documentation of her life in both York and Halifax such as the day’s weather, meals she took with neighboring families,
As Tamsin Wilton explains in her piece, “Which One’s the Man? The Heterosexualisation of Lesbian Sex,” society has fronted that heterosexuality, or desire for the opposite sex, is the norm. However, the reason behind why this is the case is left out. Rather, Wilton claims that “heterosexual desire is [an] eroticised power difference [because] heterosexual desire originates in the power relationship between men and women” (161). This social struggle for power forces the majority of individuals into male-female based relationships because most women are unable to overcome the oppressive cycle society has led them into. Whereas heterosexual relationships are made up of the male (the oppressor) and the female (the victim who is unable to fight against the oppressor), homosexual relationships involve two or more individuals that have been freed from their oppressor-oppressed roles.
By positing the lesbian as ‘excess’ in the patriarchal system we may fail to note the identities that function as ‘excess’ within our own newly created lesbian community.
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